Can't Lose You Now
by DawgStar
Summary: Sydney and Vaughn are in an undercover operation which happens to place them in their own government's Intelligence Agency, the CIA. But something goes wrong and both have been compromised. SV... Finished Story!
1. Prologue

Falling into a roll, she escaped under the gate just before it closed down on her. She took a sharp breath in as a piece of the gate scraped into her back. The roll finished with her on her hands and she pushed herself up. Taking a quick scan of the area around her, she pushed the com in her ear.

"Phoenix to Merlin, I need an extraction now."

Static filled her ear and she worried that she still was not within range for base to pick up her signal. Then she heard a voice she felt she hadn't heard in a long time.

"Phoenix, this is Shotgun. I'm within one hundred feet southeast of you. I've got you covered. Merlin is out of communication range. I think it's the high frequency within the Military Base."

"Vaughn," she whispered and allowed herself to smile slightly. Pushing her com again she replied quickly and dashed towards him while keeping stooped close to the wall. Twenty meters ahead she could see him against the forestry.

Looking once more at her surrounding area, she sprinted towards him.

* * *

"We just lost communications with Sydney." Marshall looked up from the computer.

Clenching his teeth, Vaughn bounced slightly on the balls of his feet. The hundreds of missions he had participated in could not diminish his anxiety. No doubt Sydney could finish the job as well as any of them, but it didn't mean he didn't worry.

"Try again."

"Vaugh…"

"Try again. Marshall, how can she just suddenly go radio silent?" Vaughn leaned forward and stared at the computer that held Sydney's last coordinates. Two days out in a Russian Base to get a small micro chip that had the potential to knock out all computerized intelligence for thousands of miles. It was a deep cover op that kept them in little contact with their man on point, this time it was Sydney.

"Merlin to Phoenix, Merlin to Phoenix, do you copy?" Marshall shook his head when he got no response.

Grabbing his gun, Vaughn checked it for bullets and slapped the magazine back into place. "I'm going out there. She couldn't be too far. Be ready for an extraction."

"Agent Vaughn I advise you not to go out there." a gritty voice came into the com in his ear. It was Sloane who was sitting miles away in his office. "What happens if she comes back and we can't find you?"

"Go to hell." Vaughn growled and exited the van. Pointing the gun, he swung around to survey the area. He kept low to the ground as he ran out towards the Russian Military Base. Finding the exact door they had planned for Sydney to come out of, he again surveyed the area. Nothing…

Suddenly the gate to the exit began to shut. He took two steps forward and gripped the handle of the gun hard. A body rolled out of the exit just as the gate sealed its self shut. He recognized the person immediately and heard her voice on his own com.

"Phoenix to Merlin, I need an extraction now."

He breathed in deeply and smiled. His heart slowed down from its racing pace and he pushed down on his com. "Phoenix, this is Shotgun. I'm within one hundred feet southeast of you. I've got you covered. Merlin is out of communication range. I think it's the high frequency within the Military Base."

He watched as she dashed towards him. Keeping an eye on her, he kept a close watch over the surrounding area. She had twenty yards where she had absolutely no cover from the building's walls or the trees around it.

As she got within thirty feet of him, something caught his eye. Bringing his gun up, he tried to get a better look. Over on the southeast wall he saw a shadow shift just slightly.

Two grunts brought his attention back to where he had last seen Sydney and his eyes went wide in horror as she collapsed to her knees. A dark deep red began to stain her cameo jacket as she looked blankly at him. "Syd? Sydney!"


	2. Chapter One: Mission Specs

Gasping for breath, he sat straight up and quickly looked around him. He could feel his heart wanting to tear out of his chest as he tried to catch his breath. Sweat dripped down his forehead and he threw the covers off his overheated body. Darkness surrounded him and it took him a few moments to realize that he was in Sydney's apartment. The only light that filled the room was from the half moon sitting in the far left corner of the double windows.

A body shifted beside him and a hand gently rubbed his arm. Looking down at the person beside of him, his heart slowed and his breathing began to normalize. She was okay. It was all just a dream... A nightmare…

"You okay?" Sydney asked in a whisper, her eyes filled with concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He replied with a lie. Kissing her on the forehead, he swung his legs out of bed and rested his elbows onto his knees. The bed creaked underneath him as she moved towards him.

Looking over, he saw her sitting next to him. Her dark brown bangs hung slightly in her honey brown eyes and her hair was slightly mussed from sleep. She leaned against him and took his hands into hers. Her fingers started to trace around his and she flipped his hand over to trace the creases in his palm.

"Vaughn…" She said, but didn't continue.

He looked up to see how the light from the moon lit her face and reflected in her eyes. Swallowing, he smiled a bit. He loved just how her eyes conveyed so much intelligence and a certain trust. Loved how when she smiled her two dimples would appeared and her eyes would light up. There was an old soul in her, he was sure of it. Growing up on your own did that to you. He knew just how it felt to take of himself without the help of parents.

Just as her finger hit the middle of his palm, he closed his hand over hers and squeezed lightly. Then he put his arm around her and held her against his chest not wanting to ever let go.

The scene of her there on the ground with two holes in her chest haunted him and reminded him of three years ago, sitting in the charred house. It squeezed his lungs shut and made his heart skip a beat. His eyes began to sting, but he ignored the pain and kept staring down at the small body that lay against him.

"I can't lose you Syd." He said quietly, but her steady breathing told him that she hadn't heard him. This time his lips formed a full smile. Moving her back onto the bed, he lay next to her and stared at the ceiling. He didn't remember when he fell asleep. All he knew was that morning came way too soon.

* * *

"You're telling us that there's a mole inside the CIA?" Sydney held her warm cup of tea between both her hands.

Around her sat everyone she knew within the black ops division of the Central Intelligence Agency. They were an underground operation that received money from the CIA in order to gather intelligence on different high ranking organizations around the world. The CIA picked the best from their agency and put them under one ex-terrorist cell leader, Arvin Sloane. He was a man that she had no tolerance for. After seeing many of her friends killed under this man's direction, including her fiancé, she could only despise him. There was only one reason she stayed. She could not bare to see what he did earlier at SD-6 happen again.

Others within the agency were people she trusted her life with and in many ways, had already done so. Michael Vaughn, with which she had a very confusing and rocky relationship, was a talented agent and was known for his fluency in many languages. He had been her CIA handler through her first two years of being a double agent with SD-6 and the CIA. Eric Weiss, Vaughn's best friend and once partner, was a kind hearted man. Then there were people who belonged to her family. Nadia, her half-sister, and her father, Jack, who both worked along side her on many missions. Her father was a senior in the CIA department and headed up many of the mission specs while doing his own undercover missions. Nadia worked along side her after quitting the Argentinean Intelligence agency and was currently dating Weiss. Then there was Marshall who was head of the op-tech division. After working under a terrorist SD-6 group thinking that he was working for the right side, he came to work under the CIA. He had more inventions then the world would ever know. He had pulled through for all of them on many occasions. Last was Dixon, a man she had worked with for as many years as she had worked as an undercover agent. He was her partner under SD-6, he was her director at the CIA, and now under the black-ops division, he was her partner again.

"CIA believes that there is a terrorist agent who seeks to burrow inside Langley by portraying themselves as a new recruit. They've been following this for some time and now they want us to send in an agent to investigate. This will involve having one of our agents to become a new recruit in order to get closer to this mole and find out just who this mole is working for." Sloane replied.

"Then why not take this mole into questioning?" Nadia asked, thinking on the same lines as Sydney.

Sloane nodded and sat down in his chair. Resting his chin onto the back of his clasped hands as his elbows sat on top of the table, he looked around the room and then at Nadia. "I asked them that myself and they told me that they didn't want to blow this mole out of cover. They thought that, if done right, she could become an asset. It may also be a way of blindsiding whom ever she's working for."

"Then why us? This is under FBI jurisdiction." Vaughn straightened in his chair and caught Sydney's eye across the table. They kept eye contact with each other for a moment and then both looked back at Sloane who was scratching his gray stubbled chin.

"Because they don't trust the FBI. After the incident in Texas, they are afraid of any intel leaking out into public which could indeed blow the cover of whom ever tracks this mole." Jack said straight faced as he looked at Vaughn.

"So we're sending in Sydney. You are going to become Sarah Haskins, a girl straight out of the Chicago suburbs who just graduated from MIT." Sloane slid the file down across the table. "Here's the literature on her. You need to convince the CIA Farm trainers into believing that you are Sarah. They wont know you're going undercover. Since you have not officially gone through the CIA training, I think it best for you to do this operation. They wont recognize you. Plus, if I remember correctly, you have some skill in tricking lie detectors. So I trust you can do this."

"Wait, the trainers wont know about me?" Sydney scanned through the paperwork on Sarah Haskins. It was the same kind of paperwork the government provided for people who wanted to officially change their identity. Passports, diplomas, birth certificates, everything that a twenty-nine-year old trainee would need in order to enter the CIA.

Sloane shook his head. "No. Again, the director at Langley does not want any chance of leaks. Having already had several problems with this in the past, they do not want it to happen again. They can't afford it."

"Vaughn, you're going to be Sydney's handler again. The CIA is setting up a temporary job for you in the recruitment office. You'll be the new trainer at the Farm. We want you to keep in constant contact with Sydney. Do not blow your cover." Jack warned sliding another docket to Vaughn. "Marshall will provide the op-tech. Your plane leaves at thirteen hundred hours."

"This is our main objective folks." Sloane reminded them. "You're dismissed."

Sydney got up and shut her folder. Looking over across the table, she saw Sloane speaking into her father's ear. Two months into becoming a black-ops agent, she noticed how the two seemed to reattach to each other. Although she wanted to ignore her instincts, she was worried of what her father was doing. He had done many things that were very questionable, ethically and morally. She had a feeling that something under the table was happening between her father and Sloane. Swallowing, she followed Vaughn out of the conference room.

"Sometimes I feeling like they're scamming against us." Vaughn said echoing her own uneasiness.

She nodded and looked down at her folder. "CIA trainee?"

"Guess you get to go through what you skipped when becoming a double." Vaughn grinned.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I get to become your handler again. What's not to enjoy?" Vaughn replied. "Plus you might get to work with the same trainer I did. He's a real drill sergeant."

Pushing him forward towards Marshall's office, she shook her head. "You never know, he might have become a softy in his old age."

"Sergeant 'better be ready for everything'? That type only gets grouchier." He replied and opened Marshall's door.

Marshall stood in front of them with two watches in hand.

"What do these do?" Sydney took one of the watches and looked at them carefully. They appeared to be almost normal. The only thing that made them look slightly odd was the back and the latch that kept them on their wrist.

"Other than tell time?" Marshall asked with a big grin. He was a man who looked and acted in a very boyish manner. Rarely could one find him without a smile and he talked so fast that he stumbled over his own words. "It's the next generation of agent tracking devices. See, to the normal eye it looks like a regular watch, not very fancy or shiny so there will be a less of a temptation to steal them. However, this is worth oh so much more. It gives your coordinates within a ten meter approximation. It also has a health status report that tells us your condition. If something's wrong, we'll know it immediately. Also, it has a special bug inside of it."

He scrambled over to his desk and picked up a Petri dish. In it was a small dot. He pointed to it eagerly. "See this? It's the smallest communication chip in the world. I've been working on it since I started getting funding from SD-6. It basically can dodge any scanner that's in production to date. It's undetectable because it shuts down whenever any scanner gets within a one foot radius of it. Unfortunately it also turns off when microwaves come near it too. But when it senses these waves are gone, it turns back on, allowing us to hear you and to locate you."

"So that's inserted into us?" Vaughn asked.

"Well sort of." Marshall put the dish down. Taking the watch that Sydney had in her hand, he turned it over to show the back. "See this? If the watch is ever taken off without your permission, it immediately inserts this device into your skin. It looks like a mere insect bite. So in order to keep this device out of your skin you have to take it off with a special code. Each code is made specifically for you. It's like a fail safe device for whenever you're in a tight situation. It can go in water and can withstand very hot and very cold temperatures and even electrical shock."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Sydney shivered remembering the last time she went through electric shock.

Marshall nodded. "So each has its own tracking frequency that can only be read by a scanner that only we have. It's basically a backup device for a spy and this will be the first mission that it will be tried on."

"So we're the guinea pigs? That's a comforting thought." Vaughn smirked. "Thanks Marshall. Do you have anything else?"

"Nothing that wont go undetected by the CIA. They told me I can't give you anything else Sydney, I'm sorry."

"Thanks Marshall." Sydney put on the watch. "So can you teach us how to take this off?"


	3. Chapter Two: Pizza Date

"Three hours until we have to board the plane." Sydney looked down at the watch Marshall had given her. "What do you want to do?"

"I'm thinking an expensive lunch sounds good to me." Vaughn replied getting up off the couch inside her apartment. He turned off the TV that read the weather report for the northern part of Virginia. Taking her by the hand, he pulled her tired body off the couch and kissed her lightly on the lips. "How does Giovanni's sound?"

"Pizza?" She smirked.

"Italiano."

Grabbing her coat, she tossed him her keys. "Let me grab my suitcase and I'll be right out."

"I'm thinking a little parmesan, some sausage, a little oregano… Maybe I'll even go wild and get a vegetable." Vaughn told her as she went into her room. "If I remember correctly, you like that kind of thing."

"I do huh?" She asked going to the end of her bed where her suitcase lay open. Checking one more time to make sure she had all her paperwork in order, she zipped her bag closed and carried it back into her living room and into the kitchen where Vaughn stood holding the front door open.

The two took the steps down and headed to her car that sat at the curb. Vaughn opened the trunk of her SUV and threw her suitcase in next to his own. They had gotten so good at getting packed quickly that they had perfected the art. Years of flying around the world without notice did that to a person.

"Hey Sydney!" Nadia called out the front door.

She turned to see Weiss right behind her sister. Raising her eyebrows, she nudged Vaughn who looked slightly disgruntled because of his friend's eagerness to date her sister. He rubbed his side as though she had hurt him and then smiled obligingly at her.

"Good luck, I'll see you when you get back."

"Don't wreck the apartment." Sydney replied playfully and sent an air kiss to her sister as she took her keys from Vaughn's hand without him noticing.

Getting into the car, she grinned when Vaughn noticed that he no longer had the keys. Shutting the trunk, he slid into the passenger's side and raised an eyebrow. He shut the door just before she turned her car onto the street.

"Weiss is just looking to get his heart broken. I've seen it before."

"Stop being such a pessimist. Nadia seems to really enjoy his company." She turned left into town and looked for the giant green sign that announced Giovanni's location to everyone in a fifty mile radius. The sign overshadowed even the McDonalds' sign next door to it.

Turning into the parking lot, she noticed that everyone else had the same idea as they did. In fact, the whole parking lot was full and it took some quick maneuvers in order to get a parking spot before another car did that had just entered the lot.

"It's nice to have a girlfriend that has some skill with the car." Vaughn teased her as they entered the busy restaurant.

They were greeted by a teenage hostess who stood behind a podium. Chomping loudly on a piece of gum, the girl raised her eyebrows as if wondering why they were standing in front of her. The red sun visor and apron she wore had stains on them showing how the restaurant used their hostess for many other occupations.

"How many?" the girl put her hand on the menus ready to count.

"Two…non-smoking." Sydney replied stuffing her hands inside of her jeans.

Taking out two menus and two napkin rolled silverware, the girl nodded as if to tell them to follow her. She lead them to the left side of the restaurant to a row of two person booths. All were full except the very last booth in the corner. Placing the menus and napkin rolls on the table, the girl left without a word.

"She's just a ray of sunshine." Sydney slid into the booth and pushed the menu out of the way.

Vaughn leaned onto the table and put his hands over hers. "Look Sydney… I know you want us to take it slow… But I feel like we're creeping along."

"Vaughn…"

"I love you Syd."

"I'm just… not ready to go head on right now. Remember, we agreed. It's for the best." She looked down at his hands. It still wasn't hard to recall the memory of first seeing the ring on his hand. The pain it had caused her. She had felt betrayed, as if one day he loved her and the next day he's married to some other woman. Though it wasn't the truth, it was really two blank years of her life, she could hardly convince her heart that her memory wasn't real.

He nodded and leaned back in the booth. "You're still afraid."

"Vaughn, I'm not afraid. It's just… I need some time… to adjust. These past three years have been such a whirlwind I can hardly keep up." She told him truthfully. "Please understand."

"Okay Syd." Vaughn sighed. "So what do you want to get?"

It took a moment for her to understand that he was referring to the pizza. Looking down at the forgotten menu, she scanned the front page. The restaurant was nothing out of the ordinary and had basically the same toppings as every other pizza place.

"Veggie delight. How about you?"

"Sounds good to me." He looked around for the waiter. "I don't remember why we always go to this place."

This time she let out a short amused huff. "Because it was the first place we went to after you told me you broke up with your girlfriend four years ago… right after SD-6 was destroyed."

His forehead wrinkled as he tried to remember and then a spark lit in his eyes. "Oh yeah. I think we got the exact thing we're getting today."

"Seems to be the habit." She replied.

Just then a waiter came to their table, his hat drawn backwards to keep his long bangs out of his face. His dark skin and sun kissed locks made him look like he just got off the beach. Taking out a pad, the guy got ready to take down their order.

"Medium Veggie Delight and two waters please." Vaughn said and then looked back at her as if to make sure he got the order correct. When she smiled back at him, he nodded. "Too bad we only have two and a half hours to waste."

"Yeah… too bad."


	4. Chapter Three: CIA Headquarters

AUTHORS NOTE-----------------

Just a reminder that this occurs in the forth season, thus the call signs have changed because they are in a new Black Ops division of the CIA, APO (Authorized Personnel Only).

SYDNEY – Phoenix

VAUGHN – Shotgun

JACK – Raptor

NADIA – Evergreen

WEISS – Retriever

MARSHALL – Merlin

* * *

She walked over the CIA Seal on the marble floor and tucked a piece of stray hair behind her ear. After two hours at a local hairdresser, it was now a lighter colored brown. The Seal reminded her of the last time she had walked over it in LA. She had been a "walk-in." Today was different. This time she came in with an official invitation in hand.

Behind the front desk two women sat chatting into their hands-free telephone ear pieces. They looked no older than their early twenties, probably interns. Both looked up at her with exasperation as if the last thing they wanted to do was work with someone face-to-face.

"May I help you?" asked one of them. This one had her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. The other kept chatting into her earpiece about some policy that would not allow them to do something.

Smiling, she tried to seem almost bewildered. "Hi, my name is Sarah and well…This is where I'm suppose to come for training isn't it? I got this letter here and I don't know if I've come to the right place."

If the girl could seem even more annoyed then she did earlier, she had achieved it. She obviously had no patience for trainees who were lost and confused. Pursing her lips, her index finger began to tap on the desk in a heavy rhythm.

"Trainees are suppose to go to the left. Go down the hall until you hit a dead end and turn right. There will be a large sign that says 'Orientation.' That's where you enter." She replied and snatched her ear piece up and stuck it back in her ear to show that she was finished talking with her.

Sydney nodded her thanks and made her way down the busy hallway. Seventeen hours ago she and Vaughn split at the airport terminal to make their way to their final destination. She took one of the departments unmarked vehicles to an apartment rented out in the name of Sarah Haskins. It was a nice little place that looked like a suburban girl's dream house.

Vaughn had called her on an untraceable departmental issued cell phone and told her that his place was a basic dump. He'd have to move of course. It was obvious. They talked until her cell phone beeped to tell her she had an incoming call. Her father was on the other line to tell her that the mission was going as planned. It wasn't the real reason he called, they both knew that, but it was nice to hear his voice.

"Haskins? Sarah Haskins?"

Looking up, she saw a middle aged man in a black suit and tie coming towards her. He was in standard issue clothing. Nothing that would mark him as distinguishable so that he could blend in if need be. It was why black and blue was such a popular color to wear in the agency. She nodded, pretty sure that this was one of the trainers.

"Good, you're the last person to come in. We can begin the first of the examinations. Come this way, quickly now." The man ushered her into a large room with about fifty other people who sat in rows of ten. It reminded her of those freshmen undergrad courses. The difference was that in this group no one spoke or even looked at each other. They all wanted to come across as dignified and intellectual. They all sought to serve their country. And yet none of them knew what they were getting into.

Sitting down, she put her hand bag under her chair and looked at the piece of paper on top of her desk. It was an information page asking just about every personal historical question imaginable, even where she had attended elementary school.

"Please fill out the information card." The man whispered into her ear.

Taking a deep breath in, she began filling the paper out. As she finished she looked around the undecorated room. Four cameras were installed in the corners of the room and swept the area. They were barely visible, but she noticed every couple of seconds there was a light that blinked. The naked walls were painted a sickening light blue that reminded her of the navel hospital she visited way too often. The only thing that stood out in the room was the big American flag, as if to remind their recruits why they were going through this process.

Then she noticed that one of the walls looked slightly different from the others. Staring at it, she finally understood just why it was different. It was a piece of glass that one could see through from one side, used many times to observe an interview. Today it would be used to make sure none of them cheated and to see how people reacted under stressful conditions.

These people in the room with her would be the next Vaughns, Marshalls, and Dixons of the CIA. Most were probably the top of their class in college and in their workplace. They were like she had been as a freshman in undergrad, eager to do something different in their life. Maybe they didn't feel like they fit in with the normal crowd, sick of their normal routine and looking for something exciting to do. What they didn't know was that being an undercover agent meant leaving all they knew and loved. It meant being in situations that would make any normal person freak. It also meant putting their loved ones in jeopardy. The CIA wasn't like it was in movies, where they always won in the end and the hero always felt good about helping their country.

How many times had she thought about quitting?

She hadn't joined the CIA in order to serve her country, at least not at first. It was about finding closure from her fiancé's death. It was about finding justice for him. She didn't find justice for him though. Sloane was still alive and the man who actually killed her fiancé was just another victim in the whole scheme of things.

In some ways she wanted to just stand up and tell them to go home now while they had a chance. To go back to their husbands, wives, mothers, fathers and live their dull lives. Because was it really worth fighting for? But then she knew that in some ways, it was. She found refuge in her work. The CIA was now her network and to put at least one or maybe two murderous people behind bars and off the international rings satisfied her. Life as an undercover agent sucked, but it was also what kept her getting up in the morning.

A stack of paper was shoved into her view. Taking a booklet, she passed the rest behind her. Looking at the front page, she smiled. It was much like the test Sloane had given her to get into SD-6. In fact, he probably stole the form from the CIA.

It took three hours to complete. When she finished, she stretched in her chair and closed the booklet. Then she leaned on her hand as her elbow rested on her desktop. Nobody else had finished and she remembered them telling all test takers to wait until they were dismissed.

The man who had invited her inside stood above her with a slight smile. "You may go now."

She got up and grabbed her bag. Everyone in the room looked at her, not sure if she had been asked to leave because of cheating or because she finished. Three others had been asked to leave and they seemed to doubt she had finished. One person even gave her a pained smile as if to show she empathized with her.

Leaving the room, she was led into another hallway. All the doors opened to several small rooms with two chairs, a desk, and an old school lie detector. She went into one of the rooms and sat down.

"Somebody will be with you in a moment." The man told her and closed the door, leaving her with her thoughts.

She leaned back in the moderately cushioned chair. The room was so quiet it made her ears ring. Closing her eyes, she tried to get comfortable. About ten minutes later she heard the door open. Looking over, she saw Vaughn enter in a dark blue business suit and a red tie she had picked out for him last night over the phone. She could hardly cover up her delight as he sat down.

"Sarah Haskins, I'm agent Michael Vaughn. I'll be running you through a couple of tests. We'll have to connect you to this machine. It measures your blood pressure which will tell me if you're lying. Have any questions?" Vaughn brought the cuff over and put it around her arm.

She shook her head and waited for him to sit in his chair. Shifting in her chair, she tucked a stray hair behind her ear. Then she raised her eyebrows and took a deep breath to calm her body. It was time to distract herself from whatever was going on around her. Thinking about other missions helped her to keep her mind off the questions he asked allowing her to lie without the machine detecting it.

"Is your name Sarah Tracey Haskins?"

"Yes."

"Were you born in Naperville, Illinois?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever been affiliated with any other intelligence organization?"

"No."

"Have you ever broken the law?"

"Wait do you mean like the speed limit or something?"

"Ms. Haskins, this is a yes or no question."

"Well, I guess so."

"Yes or no."

"Yes?" She shifted uncomfortably in her chair again and gazed into Vaughn's eyes as he looked at her. They had run through these questions before and knew that it was more theater acting than anything else. She knew exactly how to raise her heartbeat and knew just when to lower it. If she had a perfect test, they would be suspicious.

"Have you ever betrayed your country?"

"No."

The questions went on for an hour before he turned the machine off. Hitting a button on his watch, he smiled and pecked her on the cheek. "You did great. The test, it's perfect."

"Good," She smirked.

"And by the way, no one has ever finished the written exam as quick as you." Vaughn told her amused.

"Well lets just say I think Sloane stole his test questions from the CIA." She responded "So what's next?"

"Next is a psych eval. You get to sit identifying pictures for two hours."

"Sounds exciting."

His watched beeped and he collected his papers. "I'll take you to the next room."

"How'd I do?"

Vaughn stayed quiet and opened the door for her. With annoyance, she got up and waited for him to close the door. They went two feet down the hall and he opened another door where another man sat waiting for her. This man wore a black suit and kept his clothing in such order she could tell he was from a military background. His posture was sickeningly straight and he didn't smile when she sat down.

"This is a psychological evaluation. I want you to tell me what you see in these pictures. Every answer will be evaluated and no answer is incorrect. Have any questions?"

By the end of the evaluation she was slumped in her chair with her sweater tied around her waist. It had gone way past two hours and now she had grown impatient with the pictures that looked like mere ink blots. Every once in awhile he'd show her a scene of children playing and he asked her to interpret it.

"Okay, you're finished for today. You may exit the way you entered. We'll call you if you passed into the next phase." He collected his papers and made sure that she knew he had no intention of bantering with a recruit.

Getting up, she collected her bag and exited the room. The hall was empty and every door was shut. She knew she wouldn't get to see Vaughn before she left and also knew that she wouldn't hear from him for the rest of the night. When she went outside, the sky was already dark.

She got in and drove home without touching her radio. Pulling up into her own spot in the parking lot outside of her apartment, she watched as the car that was tailing her park a few spaces away from her. She knew she had to keep him on her tail. They wanted to make sure she was who she said she was.

The cool air hit her face as she made her way to her building. Taking the steps one at a time, she walked up to her seventh floor condo. It was the only exercise she had all day. Somewhere in the building was a weight room and it would be her next thing on her agenda. Then a long bath before she turned in for the night.

Unlocking her apartment, she ignored the man who had just passed her. She made sure she could recognize him later as she entered her apartment. Going to her room, she quickly changed into shorts and a tank top. The clock in her living room rang as the short hand hit the nine.

The map of the building sat on the wall right outside the stairwell. Glancing at it, she saw that the weight room was three floors down. With a sigh she entered the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time. The last few steps she skipped and went into the weight room where she noticed that quite a few business men and women were working out. Most of the women were on the treadmills. She couldn't stand the treadmills. If she was going to run it had to be outside.

Going straight to the punching bag, she quickly taped up her fists up and put on gloves that sat nearby. It wasn't hard to get into beating the bag up since she had so much pent up energy from a day of sitting inside. Her missions usually involved some sort of physical activity. But today did not.

"Have a bad day?" a voice came behind her and she spun around.

A young man stood behind her slightly amused. He was a fit guy probably in his early thirties with slightly ruffled hair. The tank top he wore showed off his large biceps which she could tell he was proud of. It was obvious what this man was after and she wasn't in the mood to entertain him with his idea.

"Yeah." she muttered taking off the gloves and quickly unraveling the tape on her hands. Throwing the gloves where she found them, she grabbed the water bottle she took downstairs with her and took a long gulp. Annoyed that the man looked still amused, she closed the top of her bottle and collected her things.

"Matt Rustle."

"Not interested." She replied and went towards the stairwell.

He caught her arm just before she was about to open the door to exit. She looked down at his hand and pulled away. Looking up at him, he looked slightly miffed that she hadn't bitten his bait. She had ruffled his ego and now he wanted to make sure that she knew exactly what she would be missing.

"Take your hands off me." She warned, not in the mood to deal with him. It would look a little strange if she beat him down, but at this moment she didn't care if he kept at it.

"Whoaa, whoaaa. All I wanted to do was introduce myself. I know you're new here and all. Just wanted to be a friendly neighbor." He said defensively.

But she could tell that he wanted to be more then just a friendly neighbor. Instead of going up, she let herself relax. She knew the guy who was tailing her was running on the treadmill.

"Look, I'm sorry. Just had a bad day." She apologized.

Matt smiled and shrugged. "It's okay. I can see you're stressed. Look, I'm in room 138 if you ever need someone friendly to talk to."

"Thanks." She smiled and then nodded. "Well, have a good night."

"You never told me your name."

"Sarah." She told him and then went upstairs to take a long shower.

To be continued...

* * *

PLEASE REVIEW! THANKS… 


	5. Chapter Four: The Night Before

AUTHORS NOTE-----------------

I really hope you're enjoying this and thanks for the reviews. Since I've finished writing the story, updates will come pretty regularly, so look out for them!

* * *

Vaughn collapsed into his bed and looked at the slim silver cell phone in his hand. It was three am and she'd probably be asleep. It had been a long day of questioning the recruits. He even interviewed the suspected mole who was a young woman by the name of Diana Louis. She had passed the lie detector test with perfection.

Taking his cell phone, he pushed his speed dial number for Sydney and was almost sure that he'd get her message machine. He was surprised when he heard a groggy voice on the other side of the line.

"'llo?"

"Syd?"

"Hey Michael." she answered and he knew he had woken her up. She rarely ever called him Michael and he always wondered why. Tonight was no different.

"Sorry for waking you. I thought I'd get your answering machine."

"It's okay… You just get in?"

"Yeah. How was the rest of your day?"

"Ugh, I spent two intimate hours with a punching bag downstairs."

"That bad?"

"Yeah… How was yours?"

"Good, I think… Everything went smoothly and I only had to send one person home." He smiled, happy to hear her voice. He was so use to having her body next to him that he missed it. They did so many missions together they were hardly ever apart. "I miss you."

"Miss you too." She replied and he heard her exhale. "But if I'm actually going to pass tomorrow, I'd better get some sleep."

"They called?" It was a stupid question. Sydney had to be one of the smartest women he knew. Not surprisingly she had surpassed all the recruits on her written exam. Plus the fact that all of her IQ tests were off the charts.

"Had any doubt?"

"Of course not."

"Good night."

"Night." He replied and turned off his cell. It would be another night of staring at his ceiling. Hopefully the mission would be over in a couple weeks time. It all depended on how long it would take this Louis woman to slip up and show them who she was working with. In the mean time, he would have to act like he didn't know Sydney. It'd be a hard challenge. Letting out a long sigh, he closed his eyes and waited for morning to come.

* * *

"We have looked over your scores on the examinations that you took yesterday. They are excellent. Now you said earlier that you knew a few different languages. How'd you come to learn them?" Vaughn looked down at his papers and then back up at Sydney who sat slightly slumped in her chair. He knew she had been through more than twenty some hours of questioning and could tell she was growing tired of it all. Remembering his own annoyance of the hours of questions, he smiled apologetically.

"I spent a few years in the Peace Corps. Also I studied abroad. My father was a military man and dragged his family to different countries around the world. So I picked them up as we moved around. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Italian. I guess I just had a knack for them." She replied.

"Tell me of your years in the Peace Corps."

She shrugged. "I worked in Morocco. It's where I learned Arabic. I taught English to the adults and to some of the children. Also did a bit of medical relief on the side. They had me doing odd jobs so that I could help in any way they needed me. I spent two years there. It's a dry country."

"You said your father worked in the military?"

Nodding, she bit her lower lip and looked down her hands as if not really wanting to talk about it. "Yeah, he was a top ranking officer in the Navy Seals. He served his country and wanted me to do the same. So I decided to do the Peace Corps. When he died, his truck exploded right outside of Telaviv, I felt the need to do something more than just the Peace Corps. So I decided I wanted to work at the CIA. See my mother… she died when I was six in a car accident. My father was all I had. Now… I feel I need to do what my father wants me to do, which is to serve my country."

Vaughn swallowed. Although he knew the story was made up, he was convinced by it. He nodded and began writing what she had told him down on the paper in front of him. When he looked up, he saw her eyes glazed over and he had to keep himself from comforting her.

The phone rang in front of him and he picked it up. "Yes, this is Agent Vaughn."

"We've got our fifteen selected. Bring her into the conference room so that we can brief her on the Farm with the rest of them." A deep throated voice said loudly.

"Will do." Hanging up the phone, he smiled. "Ms. Haskins, welcome to the CIA."

Sydney broke out into a grin and her dimples deepened. Wiping her eyes, she tried to make it so he couldn't see what she was doing. "Thank you so much."

"I'll take you to the conference room so that Mr. Donaldson can brief you on what's to come. Congratulations." He stuck out his hand and she shook it. They paused for a brief moment as he squeezed her hand slightly.

They stood up and headed out together. A few other recruits had come out of their meetings with dazed and haggard looks on their faces. Hours of questioning made them all drag even though they were happy to make the final selection.

The main conference room was the same room they had taken the written exam. Vaughn led her to a seat and stood at the far wall. Leaning against it, he could hardly forget his nervousness when he had been in the same situation. Only Sydney had nothing to worry about since she already had a position in the CIA. She wasn't here to prove herself. She was here in order to trick the same office she worked for.

Mr. Donaldson, a large fellow full of confidence and arrogance, walked into the front of the room. His mustache looked ridiculously cartoonish as it curled at its ends. The glasses made him look like a distinguished millionaire. Even his suit, pressed and wrinkle free, spelled out his self loving.

"You've made it this far." His scratchy throat sounded throughout the room. The grin that grew on his face showed off his thousand dollar teeth that he had spent years improving. "However the Farm is your next test. It's where you'll spend months training to become spies for the US government. If you're here for the money, forget it. You get just enough to live off of. Fame? There is no fame. If you've done a marvelous job, the public will never hear about it. They only hear about your mistakes. And if you die, your family gets an American flag and pin. They'll never know the truth of your death, only that you served your country.

"So why become a CIA agent?…"

At seven years of age, Vaughn had learned about what families got when their father, husband, brother dies in a mission. His father was killed in action and a man in a dark business suit came to him during the funeral. He told him his father was a good man, that he died helping his country. All Vaughn wanted was his father, he didn't care if his father had saved the world in his death.

Looking back up at the group of trainees, he saw the eagerness in their eyes. They didn't know that with their new jobs, they would soon loose many of the things they loved most about in life. Their lives would become a secret even to their families. They would probably loose their friends and loved ones. He could hardly count how many people he knew that had lost their lives or the lives of their loved ones because of their affiliation with their job.

Sydney also knew this harsh reality. She had lost as much or even more than he. Her fiancé, her best friends, she had even lost two years of her life in which she would never get back. Suddenly he understood her need to slow their relation down. She was afraid of loosing yet another person she loved. No one could ever blame her for her need to be careful.

"After you finish filling out the last of the paperwork, go home. Take a break, go out with your friends, because tonight will be your last free night as a normal civilian. Tomorrow you will forever join the CIA. Once you're in the CIA, you never leave." Donaldson had the flare for the dramatic and ended his presentation with a slight bow. Heading out, he pulled Vaughn to the side. "You're going to be in charge of three of the new recruits. Haskins, Louis, and Baker. They're going to live in the same wing as you. Learn to love them."

Vaughn nodded and took the folders from Donaldson's hands. Looking through the three files quickly to make sure he had the right ones, he headed out of the conference room without looking for Sydney. He'd go home and spend a good deal of time talking to her on the phone. At least that was his plan.

"Agent Vaughn?"

He looked up to see a new recruit stop him in the hall. He looked around and saw Sydney exiting the conference room with a few other recruits. She gazed back at him for a moment and then kept going.

"Yes?" he asked looking down at his watch to see the time. It also had Sydney's heart monitor on the very left hand side.

"I'm Melissa Baker. They told me you'd be my case officer." The woman looked to be in her late twenties and had her hair flipped out in a style that must have taken hours to do. Her green eyes looked at him curiously and he had a bad feeling that she was eyeing him. "I was wondering if I could have a word with you."

Rotating his shoulders slightly, he nodded. "Sure, but I have to get home soon."

"Oh, of course. I'm sorry. It's just I was wondering what kinds of things we should pack for the Farm. I just don't want to over pack."

"Nothing fancy. Just the necessities… some good workout clothes. They give you most of the stuff you'll need there." He told her. "Now I'm sorry, but I do need to get home. If you have any further questions, you can ask me tomorrow. Okay?"

She nodded. "G'night Mr. Vaughn."

He made a quick dash into the parking lot and noticed Sydney's car missing. Frowning slightly, he got into his own four door coup and drove to his apartment. Getting out, he loosened his tie and took out his cell phone. Pushing one, he listened as the phone began to ring.

When he got her answering machine, he shut his phone in frustration and made his way to his apartment. His door sat slightly ajar and he pushed it open with his foot. Looking around, he was about to get out his gun when he saw Sydney sitting on his couch with a mug in her hand watching his TV.

"Syd?"

She looked up and smiled. "There's this guy at my apartment building that seems to think that every girl is his for the taking. He kept knocking on my door so I decided to come over here for the night."

"I don't know if I like the fact that my girlfriend can pick my locks." He grinned and shut the door. Locking it, he threw his keys on the table and sat next to her. "We could get in a lot of trouble for this."

"Well, I figured we needed to meet before we head off to the Farm. You said you thought you had some ideas about this Louis woman?" She replied kissing him on the cheek and then taking a sip from her cup.

"Yeah… She did perfectly on the lie detector test. Too perfectly, in fact. I think she's been in the job for a while. Some things don't fit together either. Even through her southern accent, I sensed something else mixed in it. Maybe Russian or Romanian. I'm not one hundred percent sure yet." He looked in to her cup and saw that she was drinking tea. It came to no surprise to him and he leaned back to put his arm around her.

Sydney put her cup down on his coffee table and stared off for a moment. Her lighter hair color made her almost unfamiliar to him. Even after all the missions they had been on, it was hard to recognize her when she was in costume.

"Something's not right." she looked over at him.

"What do you mean?"

She rested her chin on her hand and shook her head. "She's not covering her trail well. If this is a professional we're dealing with, they wouldn't make these kinds of mistakes. It's too easy."

"So what are you thinking?"

"I don't know yet. Are those the files on your recruits?" She pointed to the files that he had on his lap.

They began to scramble through Louis' file and Sydney grabbed his laptop to start a police search on the woman's name. Two hours later and they were no farther in figuring out who this person was. Even her slightly mixed accent checked out since she came from a Russian family.

Sydney leaned back on the couch to stretch and then ran her hand through his hair as he sat on the floor with the files spread out in front of him. He laid his head on her leg and sighed slightly in frustration. She leaned down and kissed him on the top of the head.

"Find anything?" She asked.

"No, you?"

Shaking her head, she leaned back on the couch again and moved the laptop off her lap. Her hair had fallen out of hair tie and into her face making her look tired. It was time to get some shut eye even though they had not gotten very far in their search.

Rubbing tiredly at his eyes, he yawned and then looked at his watch. "It's two in the morning… Are you packed?"

Sydney gave him a look as if to reply 'of course.' Then she put the file back together in such an orderly fashion that Vaughn was tempted to screw some of them up to make it look like he had actually taken a look in the file.

"We should get some rest." She said as she pulled him into his bedroom. He quickly stripped down to his boxers and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he returned, he found her already curled up and asleep in bed. He lay down next to her, careful not to make any noise. Her slow and gentle breathing made him smile. He had missed that for the past few nights. Turning off the lights, he wrapped an arm around her. She turned to face him and tucked her head into his chest. Shutting his eyes, he smiled slightly. When he woke, he frowned to find that he was alone in bed. There was piece of paper on the pillow next to him. She had left him a note:

"Went out for a run, see you at the Farm."

To be continued….

* * *

More to come…Please take the time to review! The more reviews the sooner the updates. Thanks!


	6. Chapter Five: The Contact

"Melissa Baker from Little Rock, Arkansas. What's your name?"

Sydney threw her large duffle onto the floor next to the bottom bunk in the corner. The room was about the size of an average college dormitory and held three beds, two were bunked. Fortunately the other girl had not chosen the bottom bunk, leaving it open for her. She wanted to stay in the corner for better observation. Glancing over at the woman who had greeted her, she smiled. "Haskins… Sarah Haskins."

"Nice meetin' ya." Melissa grinned. "Guess we're roommates. Wonder who the third girl is. And isn't our case manager a hottie? Wonder how old he is."

Sitting on the bed, Sydney shrugged and watched as a second woman entered the room with a slightly larger pack then she herself had. It had to be Diana Louis. She was thin wiry woman who was well defined. Her dark hair framed her face and made her ghostly blue eyes stand out. She smiled shyly and nodded to them while setting her bag down on the ground.

"Hey, you must be the third girl in our triple. Melissa Baker from Little Rock, Arkansas. And that's Sarah Haskins over there. What's your name?"

"Diana Louis. Came from Raleigh, North Carolina." Diana replied letting Melissa shake her hand.

"So… this is going to be a blast. I just know we can all get along just mighty fine." Melissa was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. Going over to the door, she shut it and grinned. "By the end of this, I think I'm going to have that Agent Vaughn eating out of my hands."

"CIA prohibits fraternization between agents in the same departments." Diana replied as if already sick of hearing Melissa talk. Throwing her bag open, she began to unpack.

Unperturbed by Diana's lack of enthusiasm, Melissa sat next to Sydney and rolled her eyes. "So I'll just move to a different department. Or I'll just get field rated. You know what I heard? I heard he got demoted from some higher part of the agency. They weren't impressed with his work after his wife died so they downgraded his security pass and made him work with new recruits. He wont know it's his lucky…"

Just then a knock made Melissa stop talking. Eager to move away from her, Sydney opened the door to find Vaughn on the other side.

"Oh we were just talkin' bout you. I was just tellin' them how you were so helpful last night. Told me exactly what to pack so I wouldn't look like no fool." Melissa pulled Sydney aside and opened the door more so that he could enter.

Vaughn nodded with a tight lipped smile. His eyes wondered over to Sydney, who looked away. CIA would kill them if they compromised the positions they had worked so hard to get… Well that she had worked so hard to get.

"Mess is in an hour. Training will begin at fourteen hundred hours. So wash up and get your gear ready. Donaldson hates tardiness." Vaughn stated also looking away and turning his attention to Melissa who seemed to be slobbering all over him. "Any questions before I leave?"

With no one speaking, he nodded to them all and turned to walk out. Melissa gazed up and down his body as he went down the hallway. She grinned and shut the door behind him. "See what I mean, isn't he just a hunk of meat?"

Sydney rolled her eyes and caught Diana's gaze who grinned knowingly at her. Sorting quickly though the clothing that they were given, she began quickly unpacking her gear. Organizing it and putting it all under her bed in the drawers was an easy task that kept her mind off of Vaughn for the moment.

The schedule told her what they needed to wear, which was their sweats. Changing into them without a word to the other women, she grabbed her hooded zip-up sweatshirt and headed out the door… She was hoping to get away from Melissa who happened to want to make her boyfriend into a food item.

She felt someone put their hand on her shoulder and she spun around to see Diana who had jogged to catch up with her.

"Sorry, just don't want to be left alone with her." Diana explained with a pained look.

Nodding, they made their way to a mess hall that had twenty other people already in line for food. Eleven or so years of working as an agent and she found herself in a mix with a bunch of recruits. She felt out of place and yet no one could find out how uncomfortable she was. They were eager to join the world of intelligence and she had spent so many years wondering if it was time to quit and find a more normal life.

"I don't think I can survive these nine weeks with her in the same room." Diana said hoping to start up a conversation.

"Yeah." Sydney smiled. "I know what you mean."

"I never got a real introduction. I'm Diana."

"Sarah, nice to meet you."

"Where are you from?"

Grabbing a plate, she took a spoonful of corn and moved down the line. "Naperville… It's a suburb of Chicago."

"Chicago? I love Chicago. Have you gone to many Broadway plays?"

Shaking her head, she really hadn't been to any plays in Broadway. "My family moved around a lot. I was born there and left at the age of two. I just moved back when I was recruited. So I guess I can't really say I'm from there."

"How come you moved around so much?"

They both sat down at a long rectangular table. She put her plate down and asked for one of the men next to her to pass a napkin down. She put it in her lap and then looked around the room. First thing she spotted was Vaughn who was sitting with the rest of the trainers on the opposite side of the dining hall. He exchanged looks with her before going back into a conversation with a man next to him. It took a second for her to see that the man next to him was her father.

"Uh… my father was in the military."

"So you're a military brat?" Diana grinned.

"I guess so." Sydney replied thinking about how she had grown up in an empty home. She had spent her life growing up in boarding schools while believing her father worked on selling airplane parts. During the summers her father hired a nanny to take care of her. It was all a front and she'd find out later that her family had a disturbing past that became stranger the more she found out about it. The fact that she had basically been trained to be an agent before she could even remember disgusted her. "My father was proud of his work."

"My grandparents immigrated here just before I was born. My father and grandfather worked as an Intelligence agent for the US government. So I guess I'm just carrying on the tradition." Diana replied as if understanding. "You'd think the government would have the decency to feed us with real food."

"You'd think." Sydney replied watching her father in her peripheral vision. He caught her eyes and nodded his head to tell her to come over. "Hold on, I'll be right back."

Going across the room, she stopped next to Vaughn and waited expectantly.

"Ms. Haskins, sorry for interrupting your meal, but I wanted to introduce you to one of the top level senior agents in one of the specialized divisions of the agency. This is Special Agent Jack Bristow. They saw your remarkable scores and wanted to meet you in person. They think that if you survive the Farm they may have a job waiting for you in their department." Vaughn informed her.

Her father stuck out his hand in greeting and she noticed a piece of paper hidden in the palm of his hand. She smiled and shook his hand. "Hello, nice to meet you."

"Pleasures all mine, I've heard all about you. I hope to hear even more in the coming weeks."

"Thank you."

"You should probably get back to eating since the hall's closing in twenty minutes." Vaughn nodded.

"Have good day sir." She turned around as she stuffed her hands into her pockets. What the hell was this all about? Her father had just jeopardized the mission by contacting her. This wasn't like him at all. Jack Bristow was a man who usually kept out of sight during missions.

Going back over to her table, she sat down in confusion.

"What was that all about?" Diana asked crumpling her napkin and putting it on top of her empty plate.

Taking her hands out of her pockets and resting her elbows on the table, ignoring all the table manners her father and the boarding school had taught her, she shrugged. "Some senior agent from the CIA wanted to talk to me about their division. They knew my father because he had worked with the CIA a couple of times in Iraq."

"I heard you got incredibly high scores on that test."

She shrugged again and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I didn't think they were that great. I think they just wanted to give me their condolences. But after he's dead… well nothing can bring him back."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know your father passed away… How'd he…"

"Die?" Sydney slumped in her seat.

Pushing a stray hair behind her ear, she thought about how many times people were told that their loved ones had passed away. Rarely were they ever given the full truth about their death. They were, instead, given a small piece of the truth. Their loved ones were killed serving their country, doing the right thing. They were heroic and brave.

But for her own mother, she had not died in heroics. Her father had killed her in order to save his daughter. He point blank shot her in the head. He watched her take her last breath and saw her dead eyes. No, Laura Bristow… Irena Derevko, the wife of an intelligence office and an ex-undercover agent for the KGB, hadn't died for her country.

She felt her eyes burn and she shifted them to look down at the table. Taking a deep breath, she stared back at Diana without really seeing her. "They said he died instantly when a car bomb hit their unarmored vehicle heading into Telaviv. He was taking in supplies to injured soldiers."

"Oh god, I'm so sorry."

All she could do in response was nod as she thought about her own sister who wasn't aware of the real reason behind their mother's death. Nadia had some fake impression that their mother had been killed cold-blooded by some man who had a gun pointed at her sister's head. In anger and pain, Nadia shot the man, emptying her magazine. She had no idea that Sydney's father was the reason their mother was dead. And if her father had his way, she would never find out.

"Look, I'm going to head back to our room. Do you need anything?"

"No… Thanks."

Sydney nodded and got up, rubbing away the hot tears that had collected in her eyes. She made her way out of the dining hall and went into the bathroom right outside their room. Going into a toilet stall, she shut the door and quickly fished out the note in her pocket. Opening it slowly, she recognized her father's writing:

'DKJAGVBAGNCEIAW'

Staring at it for a moment, she began tearing each letter apart and sorted the letters out to decode the message. She threw out certain letters until she finally found what she was looking for. 'NEW KGB.'

"Oh." She whispered to herself in surprise and then threw the pieces of paper into the toilet just as the entrance door creaked open. Flushing the evidence, she pushed open the stall and practically ran into Diana. "Sorry."

"Look, if I upset you in anyway…"

"No no… It's just… I'm still having a hard time dealing. My father, well he was my hero. I just miss him. That's all." Sydney told her. "I feel like I just lost him yesterday."

"Well if you ever need to talk…"

"I'm fine. Thanks." Sydney looked at her watch and raised her eyebrows. "If we don't hurry up, we'll be late."

They exited the bathroom and Sydney led the way to the main conference room.

To be continued….

* * *

More to come… Please take the time to review. Thanks! 


	7. Chapter Six: Paintball War

Author's note------

Hey, thanks for all the new reviews! Hope you enjoy this chapter.

* * *

"How'd she do?" 

"Everything seems to be going smoothly. Looks like she's getting close to her and the trainers don't suspect a thing." Jack sat down at his desk and looked up at Sloane who was pacing the room.

"She got the message?"

"Of course she did. You don't think I'd spend years hiding codes in her crossword puzzles so that she couldn't figure out a simple decoding later." Jack replied stiffly. Years of trying to keep his daughter safe had cost him a real relationship with her and she hated him for it. But he had feared that the day would come when she would need the skills he taught her to defend herself. The day came earlier than he had expected. His plan was to recruit her into the CIA once she was out of college...only if she wanted to join. But Sloane had recruited her before she had even finished her sophomore year of undergrad and Jack could only wait until the time came when he could tell his daughter the truth of her employers activities without risking her life in the process.

Things in his life had never gone as planned. In fact, when Sydney came into his life, he had never even thought of her entering the same world as he. He saw her as a doctor or maybe a teacher like her mother. But when his wife betrayed him, he suddenly noticed how vulnerable his family… his daughter was. So he made a tough call and tested Project Christmas on her, hoping that it would protect her. Then he saw her potential, saw how she thought, how smart she was and knew that she would eventually figure out who he was and what he did. So he planned to recruit her to the CIA, where he could tell her the truth. Yes, things had gone way off track.

"Good. In a few weeks they'll start their field work. I think that will be the best chance that this Diana Louis will begin contacting her superiors. If that's true, I want Sydney right on her tail. The CIA can't afford the KGB to rebuild its self." Sloane sat down in front of Jack. "My daughter is on vacation with Weiss."

"You sound worried." Jack speculated remembering how much he distrusted Vaughn with his own daughter.

Sloane folded his hands in front of him and stayed still for a moment as if in deep thought. "No, Weiss is a good man… I trust him."

"Then what's the problem?"

"I just hope she knows how much she means to me." Slone spoke softly.

Getting up, Jack looked out his window to see Marshall and Carrie with their son. Marshall held his son in the air like an airplane and the little baby giggled.

"_Daddy look, I can fly."_

_At four years old, his daughter with her sparkling brown eyes grinned with one tooth missing. She spread out her arms as she stood right before top of the small hill and began to run at top speed. Then she jumped just as she reached the top into his arms as he stood just below. Her dimples showed as she looked up at him._

_"You went high that time." He told her. Lifting her up, he held her above his head. She shut her eyes, feeling the wind as he walked down the side of the hill. "You're my little bird."_

He glanced back at Sloane. "They'll never really know… it's for the best."

"Is it?" Sloane grunted in speculation.

* * *

"Hey. How are you?" Vaughn asked as he closed the door to his office outside his bedroom. He watched as she collapsed on his couch with a groan and looked up at him as if annoyed at his question. 

"I've spent the last sixteen hours disarming bells from a rigged house, climbing walls that break apart, and listening to a girl who's got a thing for you and you can ask me that with a straight face?" Sydney retorted as she made room for him to sit next to her. They kissed and she allowed him to put his arm around her. She rested her tired head against his shoulder and smiled slightly. "I think you enjoy the attention."

"Syd…"

"I'm joking… So do you have anything that can get me out of that cramped room and get me back into missions where I don't have to pretend I'm incapable of doing my job?" She looked up at him looking for sympathy.

"I'm the agent that's known for being demoted to recruitment."

"Oh, but you're adored by so many." She closed her eyes and her smile grew larger.

"First field mission is tomorrow." He announced. "We think she's going to try to contact her superiors soon. It's been three weeks and I'm sure they're getting antsy."

He felt her breathing grow steadier against his neck and knew that she was falling asleep. Gently he ran his finger across her cheek bone then he kissed her on the lips. Three weeks of seeing her alone for thirty minutes at a time was him crazy and even though he'd love to have her stay over night, he knew that unfortunately he would have to wake her. They couldn't afford to be caught by other trainers who happened to come into rooms without politely knocking on the doors first.

Pushing a stray hair behind her ear, and whispered softly into her ear. "You should get up. "

She grumbled incoherently back at him and sat up tiredly. Under her eyes, there were dark shadows that told him of how little she slept. She had to keep tabs on Louis and to do that, she spent most of her nights on watch. "I need a vacation when this is over."

He didn't speak for a moment. Instead he watched her carefully as her mind seemed to wonder to other things as she looked around his office. Did she remember the last time they had planned a vacation? Swallowing hard, he didn't know how to tell her how afraid he was of losing her again. The fear was practically drowning him. "I love you."

Standing up, she walked over to his desk and ran her hand across the oak wood. Her hand got to the end of the desk and she turned so that her body could lean against it. Her dark brown eyes studied him for a moment as if unsure what to say. As if to fill in the silence his laptop on the desk turned its fans on in rhythm with the blinds across the room as they banged against the open windows. All the history they had together made the silence between them painfully thick. But her dimpled smile made the air lighter and she walked over to him. Kissing him lightly on the lips, she pulled away before the kiss grew any deeper. "I'll see you soon."

Her tired body slipped out the room leaving him alone in his annoyingly quiet office. He leaned back on his coach feeling more lonely then usual. Getting up, he locked his door and went into his bathroom that was between his bedroom and office. Would things ever go back to normal, he wondered as he looked into the bathroom mirror above his sink. Every time he saw her reminded him of how scared she was of committing herself to him again.

"Santa Monica…" he whispered and looked down at his left hand as it rested against the sink. Three years ago he had planned on proposing to her. It was all set up and all he had to do was get her to the airport. But they never got there and he figured they would probably never try. Not after all that had happened. It would be too painful. "We do need a vacation."

* * *

"Okay folks, it's time to put your training to some use. Tonight's your first field mission. This is what we call a game of cat and mouse. Your instructors will brief you on the specs of the mission. Good luck and don't get caught." Donaldson smirked and got down from the stage. 

Sydney fit the communication device into her ear and looked over at Diana who did the same. They smiled at each other before throwing their coats on and getting into the dark blue van. Vaughn was set up in the driver's seat while Melissa sat in the passenger's seat.

"I'm running op-tech." Melissa grinned.

"Louis, you're on point. Haskins, I want you to be back up support. Get as many targets as you can without getting caught yourself. All four of us are connected to the same frequency line. This is your basic paintball war. Simple and straight forward… Oh and don't hit any civilians." Vaughn smiled stiffly and turned on the ignition. "You'll be starting on Neil and Grand. Everything clear?"

"Yeah, sure." Sydney replied watching their tail. She watched the order they drove out in and counted how many groups there were. Seven in all… Stuffing her paintball pistol inside her jacket, she made sure she had enough ammo for their mission. "Got cams set up Baker?"

"Yup, they're all set to go. I've got your back."

"How comforting…" Diana grumbled softly so that only Sydney could hear.

After three weeks, Sydney had gotten so close to Diana that it was hard to remember that she was suppose to keep an eye on the woman. Diana fit so well with her and was the only person that kept her sane as she had to make so many horrible mistakes that would probably have lead to her own demise if she had made them in the actual field.

"Okay, show time. Everyone ready?" Vaughn asked as they stopped near the docks of a fair ground. He put in his comm and nodded to them both. "Good luck."

"See you in a few." Sydney got out and shoved her hands into the pockets of her brown jacket. The streets were crowded with civilians gallivanting around the dock area as they headed over to the fair grounds a few blocks away. In order to fit in, they got to wear their own clothing from home. Tonight would be the first night of seriously watching to make sure Louis didn't pull any tricks that could put the CIA in jeopardy, which meant that she no longer had to fake being bad at her job. She wondered if three weeks of pretending to do poorly would rust her senses.

They walked into the crowd and made sure that they got lost in it. She noticed an alley a block up the dock and they turned into it for their first stop. Scanning the area that they had just vacated, she quickly eyed two people tailing them. Getting out her paintball gun, Sydney grinned. "Ready?"

"You already spot some?" Diana asked looking around confused.

Aiming, Sydney shot off two pellets that zoomed through the crowd with deadly accuracy. They hit their mark in the middle of the two's chest. The pair looked up surprised and were slightly disgruntled at the fact that they had been caught so soon.

"Great, six groups left." Sydney put her gun away and pulled Diana back into the crowd.

"You're enjoying this." Diana commented as they made their second stop behind a building. She studied her closely and grinned knowingly. "Aren't you?"

Sydney felt a small bit of the excitement she felt when doing normal missions for the CIA. Even though her years as an agent had soured her to her job, she still enjoyed some aspects of it. One of them was the physical and mental activity that came with espionage. It allowed her to pool all her resources in order to complete her mission and she hoped that somehow she was making some difference… But there were times she doubted that it really did anything because once one person is gone, another takes his place. That's the kind of outlook she had gotten after working so long in this job. She had lost the naivety that she once had as a new recruit.

Looking through the darkness, she searched the area and found another pair walking a couple yards in front of them. They ducked behind a stand and were watching another group sixty meters north of them. A few more yards away from them was yet another pair, making Sydney concerned that their new recruits were so clumsy that they bunched up together into one spot on the pier.

"I spot three pairs. How many do you see?"

"Two." Diana pushed on her com. "How many left in the game?"

"Five." Melissa said in their ear.

"I'll get those two while you get them. Ready?" Sydney aimed her gun. "One…Two…Three."

It took shortly over thirty seconds to have three teams down. Only one team left to go. Sydney looked around and finally spotted them about fifty yards east of their position. Nodding in that direction, she allowed Diana to take aim.

"Phoenix do you copy?"

Sydney held her breath and looked over at Diana who looked just about as confused as she felt, but for different reasons. Vaughn knew that he wasn't supposed to use her real call sign unless it was an emergency and at this point, with Diana on her side, she couldn't imagine what the problem was.

"Phoenix this is Shotgun, do you copy?"

"Who's Phoenix?" Diana shot off two pellets and missed her targets. Pushing on her com, she ducked down as two shots hit the wall behind them. "Hey, whoever's on this line, get off. Vaughn, Melissa, are you there?"

"Phoenix you've been made, do you copy? You've been made!"

Sydney looked down at her watch and then back at Diana. "I think we need to get back to the van and see what's going on."

"Who the heck is on our line?"

"I don't know. But I have a bad feeling about this." Sydney shot off two pellets at their targets. They hit their mark and Sydney sprinted out into the street with Diana on her tail. Making sure that the woman followed her, Sydney spotted their van. The door lay wide open. "Vaughn?"

She jumped into the van to find Vaughn lying against his steering wheel. His body was limp and blood flowed down the side of his head. "Oh god… Vaughn."

His eyes unfocused, he lifted his head slightly in a daze. "Syd?"

"Where's Baker?" Sydney looked at the large bruise forming on his forehead and noticed a tranquilizer dart in his side. "Vaughn, listen to me. Where's Baker?"

"We had the wrong one… Sh-she's the mole. I put a tracking device on her." He pointed to the device on his lap. "Syd…"

"What are you talking about?" Diana asked looking from Sydney to Vaughn. "Is he okay?"

"Diana, I need you to drive him back to the Farm. Then I need you to dial this number." Sydney gave the girl the direct line to Director Chase's office at Langley. "Listen to me closely Diana. Melissa Baker is a double agent for the KGB, a USSR intelligence agency that is trying to reform and is known for illegal terrorist movements. Get him medical help and dial this number. Tell them that Phoenix is on the fly. You got that?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm part of a counterintelligence division within the CIA. The trainers will have no idea what I am talking about because this is in security clearance that is above them. You need to follow my instructions. If you don't, Baker… or whoever she is will be able to get sensitive intelligence out of the country and into enemy hands." Sydney opened a box underneath Vaughn's seat and found a gun, a couple of magazines, and some handcuffs.

Jumping out of the van, she looked at the homing device in her hands and found Melissa in the northeast quadrant just a block away. As she began to leave, Diana stopped her by putting her hand on Sydney's shoulder. Turning towards her, Sydney saw what was about to happen and ducked a punch that Diana had swung at her.

"Quite clumsy for a CIA agent I must say. We thought he was the only one that knew. But now we know better than that." Diana grunted as she took another swing at her.

Ducking again, Sydney let her body carry itself so that she could swing a kick to the woman's midline. Knocking her down, Sydney brought her gun up and aimed it at the woman's throat. "Don't move."

Diana put her hands up and breathed quickly as she stared at the end of the gun. "We've got what we need."

"And I've got what I need." Sydney replied back taking a pair of handcuffs out. "Who's your contact?"

Shaking her head, Diana laughed. "The CIA is full of leaks."

Sydney felt something sting her lower back and she turned to see Melissa behind her. Her limbs grew heavy and as she hit the ground Diana stood up. The last thing she felt was something hitting her hard on her gut.

To be continued….

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Say tuned for new Chapters coming soon! 


	8. Chapter Seven: The Watch

Author's note------

Sorry for the massive grammatical errors in that last chapter. As a college student, I didn't have much sleep when I was updating the story to put onto the web. Thanks for all the reviews and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

* * *

A loud pitched noise woke him. It was something near his head that pulsated into his ears, stabbing the fogginess in his brain. He groaned and the light above him stung his eyes when he tried to open them.

Where the hell was he? What happened? He was knocked unconscious… but why? Louis…Baker… a mole in the CIA… Undercover ops… Field mission…

"Vaughn?" a deep recognizable voice coming from the left side of his bed snapped him out of his tangent.

Opening slowly this time, he was surprised to find Jack Bristow standing next to his bed. Of all people he wanted to see, Jack was the last of them. Wait, where the hell was Sydney? "Where's Sydney?"

"Something went… wrong during the field mission." Jack said and then looked behind him where Marshall stood nervously watching them. He looked slightly guilty, as if he had done something wrong. "The tracking device hasn't activated yet on Sydney's watch and she was last seen with Diana Louis. Melissa Baker and the Van that you were driving are missing also. Mr. Vaughn, they threw you out of the car before speeding away."

"Wait, the tracking device isn't activated?" Vaughn sat up confused and looked at Marshall for an answer.

"Well no. Not until they take off her watch. We know Sydney's alive, but her watch has been slightly going haywire for the past couple of days. It's not giving us a location." Marshall shrugged. "We think that she might have hit it and loosened some of the wiring in the watch."

"So shouldn't the tracking device be activated then?"

Marshall shook his head while looking at the ground. "No, because it's on its own circuit. I was afraid that if the watch stopped working then the device would have no way of activating. So… I created a totally different circuit for it. Only, now that's what is causing all the problems. So unless someone takes her watch off, we have no idea where she is."

"…You said a few days? How long have I been out?"

Jack's jaw muscles tightened and then loosened before speaking. "Three days and fourteen hours."

Vaughn let his body hit the pillow. He tried to think of the last thing he had heard or said in the van. "I was shot with a tranquilizer dart… before I could react Baker slammed my head against the steering wheel. I think she was waiting for me to call for help. When I did, she left as if she had somewhere to go. I guess she was setting up a trap. Sydney got there and I told her that the mole was Melissa. Then I everything went dark. I don't remember anything after that."

"Wait." Marshall's eyes sparked and he took a look at Vaughn's watch. "Oh man, I totally forgot."

"What?" Jack asked impatiently.

"There's a call button on your watch Vaughn, to call any other agent with the same prototype. It was something I added on to it last minute and I forgot to put it on the stationed one in our office. If we push it, it may call attention to its self. They may take it off her arm and that will activate the device." Marshall quickly punched in Vaughn's code and took off the watch. Pushing one of the buttons on the back of the watch, a light suddenly turned on and the watch began vibrating.

"Marshall, how will we know it worked?" Jack looked down at the man.

* * *

She woke up to her watch vibrating against her wrist. Her head felt like it had just been smashed through a couple of walls and something warm was running down the side of her face. Looking around, everything blurred in and out of focus. The smell of chlorine and human waste reached her nose and made her hold her breath for a second before she could tolerate the new sense.

"What the hell is this?" A voice grumbled and before she could fully understand what was going on, a hard fist hit the side of her head.

Someone grabbed her hand which was tied down. Undoing the tight restraints, they took off her watch and she felt a slight pinch in her skin. All that registered to her was the crack of her watch hitting the floor and being crushed under someone's heel. They tied her hand down and hit her across the face again.

"I know your name isn't Sarah. What is it?" the same deep voice asked into her ear. She felt his hot breath against her neck and yet the words didn't match his breathing. It was like watching a dubbed movie where the words didn't match the mouth and she was slightly confused until she slowly came to realize that she was drugged. "Who the hell are you? Are you part of the CIA?"

"Look at this bruise Greg. You see what she did to me?" It was woman who spoke. Was it Michelle?

"Put her to sleep. I don't feel like dealing with her right now." The man grumbled.

She felt a needle go into her arm and soon the voices began to grow dim and the smells became bearable and then nonexistent.

* * *

"It's working and whoa…" Marshall looked at the coordinates and scratched the top of his head.

"What?" Dixon looked down at the portable screen and raised his eyebrows.

"She's heading to the middle of Russia." Marshall explained and then gave Vaughn the screen. It guessed the trajectory the point was making as it grew fainter and fainter. She was heading straight into the middle of Russian territory.

Jack nodded. "Let's get the extraction team ready. Our mission has already failed… there's nothing to lose now except my daughter's life. Agent Vaughn, get Weiss and Nadia back into the office immediately. The team's leaving in two hours. I want the equipment ready in one. Got that Marshall?"

Vaughn took one of the radios that had been connected to Sydney's tracking device. Leaving the room, he went straight to the telephone and punched in the number to Weiss' cell phone.

"Hey, this is Eric."

"Weiss, you and Nadia need to get back to the office stat. Pack your bags. We're heading to Russia in two hours. I'll explain when you get here." Vaughn looked down at Sydney's monitor and noticed that her blood pressure was below normal.

"Well hello to you too Vaughn…" Weiss replied jokingly.

Hanging up before Weiss could give him any grief, Vaughn grabbed the small duffle bag that he kept in the office for such occasions and went back into Marshall's office.

Marshall was staring at the main screen trying to clear up the audio. All that could be heard was a few muffled words. He looked up and was surprised to see Vaughn behind him. "Hey, I'm trying to get a better feed."

"Do you have anything else that could help us out in Russia?"

"Other than the normal stuff? No... Sorry." Marshall replied just as he clicked the receiver making the voices ten times clearer.

They both strained to hear what was going on.

_"…leave her before you end up killing her."_

_"I think they know about us."_

_"Who cares? They were bound to find out sooner or later. Right now, I believe that we have an asset of theirs. I'm sure we can get something out of this whole catastrophe."_

"Agent Vaughn, we need to go over mission specs." Jack came into the office and stared down at the screen. His hard eyes clouded slightly and his jaw clenched together. "Enough of this. The only way we can get Sydney out alive is if we keep focused. Marshall, turn that down."

Vaughn's hands clenched at his sides and he took a deep breath to calm his rage. Following Jack out, he tried to ignore the sounds coming from the receiver as the words echoed inside his head. If he got a chance, he was going to make sure that those bastards would burn in hell.

* * *

She groaned in pain as she tried to shift her body into a better position. The floor was rough and it poked into her back. Coldness seeped into her from the ground and it took her a few seconds to realize that she was lying on rough cement. Shivering, she tried to get a clearer perspective on her predicament. That became difficult since her eyes were blindfolded.

As she breathed in, a sharp stabbing pain radiated from her ribs. The air was musty and stale. Where ever she was, the place was not well ventilated. Hard soles hit the cement and they echoed against the metal walls. She guessed that they had probably moved her into an abandoned warehouse.

"Awake I see?"

She turned her head left towards the source of the voice.

A sharp nudge in her side pushed her to her front and her face stung from the abrasions on her skin touching the cold floor. It gave her numbed arms, which were tied behind her, relief from the pressure of her own weight and they began to tingle with sensation. Then someone yanked her roughly to her feet by pulling on her arms. The strain on her shoulders made her cringe as she fell into a hard seated chair.

The light pierced her eyelids as the person yanked off the blindfold that had kept her in darkness. She blinked to try to get use to the light and turned quickly in the direction of the person that had spoken. Her eyes went wide in realization as she recognized who the man was. It was the man who had led her into the testing room the first day at Langley. How many leaks where stationed in the CIA?

"Hey there… didn't think I'd ever see your pretty little face again." The man sat down in a chair that he had brought in and grinned.

She took a good look at him and noticed a few things she hadn't seen earlier. His graying hair was slightly matted and part of his front top left tooth was chipped making it look like a fang. His eyes were a dull gray and his nose was slightly bigger in ratio to his head.

He scratched the top of his head and then nodded to someone behind her that she couldn't see. "Bruce here… let's just say that he is very good at getting people to talk. I want to know who you're working for because I know it's not the CIA. Is it the FBI?"

Staring at him, she clenched her jaw and took in a slow deep breath. It was a calming tactic she had used many times. Something she had learned during her time growing up dealing with disappointments when her father never showed when he had told her he would. It had also helped her to deal with the problems she had with SD-6. Her face muscles relaxed giving her a fake sense of calm that spread throughout her body.

"Tsk… I was hoping we'd get this over with quickly." He sighed almost over exaggerating his disappointment.

Something cold hit the side of her neck and from experience she realized what was happening as her muscles twitched uncontrollably. It felt as though a thousand large pins were sticking in and out of her body. The pain spread so deeply that she could feel it in her bones. She clenched her jaw closed. Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on other thoughts, like just what she'd do when she got out of her binds.

And then the pain suddenly stopped. Her ears began ringing, deafening her to anything else around her. Then her hearing began to come back. First she could hear water dripping off in the background and then she could hear the two men's breathing. Slowly opening her eyes, she glared at the man's face in front of her.

"I knew this is going to take some time to persuade you. I would have been disappointed if it had ended so quickly… Especially after all that training you must have received in order to fake the tests at Langley. But don't worry, the fun is just beginning." He stood up and left her line of view, leaving her with Bruce who came into her view.

She sized him to be around six feet and had to be holding at least two hundred pounds on those giant bones. Taking a deep breath as she ignored the pain in her ribs, she licked her dry cracked lips and let her breath out slowly.

A blow to the side of her face sent her flying out of her chair and she crashed onto the ground with a painful grunt. All the air rushed out of her lungs and she tried to catch her breath before the next hit to her back sent her rolling into the legs of the chair she had just left. Trying to get a bearing on things, she began to sit up only to crash back down to the ground as more electricity was sent jolting into her body.

The last thing she heard was the loud crack of her collar bone giving out from a hard kick to her left shoulder. The world felt as if it shrunk and then grew as she fell in and out of consciousness. Then her mind rested into darkness and peace.

To be continued….

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Say tuned for new Chapters coming soon!


	9. Chapter Eight: The Warehouse

Author's note

Sorry for the short delay. College is getting hectic now that finals are coming around. Here's the next chapter, hope you like it. Don't forget to review! Thanks!

* * *

"Once we hit the ground, we'll break into teams. This is an old storage facility once used by the original KGB just before the Cold War. It was big enough to hold an adequate amount of weapons to keep the U.S.S.R. running through the whole war. That means that this place could be bigger than we first expected.

"Now, Marshall and Dixon are watching us from a satellite that is located just above our position. It's a thermal reader with the usual specs, so that means they'll be able to tell us if we're about to be under attack. Agent Vaughn, you'll be heading up team one on the Northeast point. Agent Weiss you'll be controlling team two on the Northwest point and Agent Santos, I want you on the single South entrance. This is a sweep, so you find anyone, I want them down. Shoot to kill folks. None of us want to see the KGB reform. Bring our agent home safe." Jack loaded his gun and looked out the hanger door that would allow them to parachute twenty meters west of their target building.

Vaughn nodded to Jack and then Nadia and Weiss. All he wanted was to extract Sydney as quickly as possible. They hadn't failed an extraction for her yet and he wasn't about to start now.

"Agent Vaughn." Jack tossed him the scanner to Sydney's tracking device. "Get my daughter out alive."

Tucking the instrument into his jacket, he zipped up and got ready to jump. His team would be the first to land. They'd infiltrate the building while there was still some amount of surprise and hopefully be able to find Sydney's coordinates before being spotted, allowing them time to get out while the other teams covered their escape. It was a straight forward mission that could go horribly wrong.

He unhooked his harness from the plane pole and took a leap out into the air. Yanking quickly on his parachute cords, he felt his body jerk up as the material slowed his fall to the ground. The concrete hit his feet hard and he used his knees to soften the fall. Taking the harness off, he sprinted over to the large instrument box that landed fifteen feet away.

_"Shotgun, we have just made landing. Read me your position." _

Pushing on his com, Vaughn began grabbing his weaponry. "Retriever, we're in position. Once we're in, I want you to move on my mark."

_"Copy that Shotgun. Over and out."_

_"Evergreen in position. Moving on your mark Shotgun."_

"Copy that Evergreen. Let's get Phoenix out alive."

The magazine in his hand locked snuggly into his M-16 that already had a silencer put into place and he took quick aim to scan his perimeter. Making sure they were secure let his mind at ease. All this to extract one key member of their team would have never been cleared if they were still in the CIA. However the black ops missions were not under the direction of Langley, giving them leeway into what they were allowed to do.

"Move in." Vaughn growled his command to his own operatives on the ground. They scurried across the empty pavement yard as all of them searched the perimeter for any movement. The whole place was so quiet that it made his ears ring from the noise on the plane. "Riley, you take point. I want Charley and Bradley to guard the perimeter once we're inside. Report of any movement. White, cover our backs. Let's bring our operative home in one piece boys."

Getting to the door of their entrance, Vaughn nodded at Riley who was a young operative just out of the military. Riley got his gun ready and tested the door. It was locked. He took out a set of lock picks and began working on the door. It took only a few moments until the door creaked open and they could see into a dark entrance.

Riley sped in, followed by five others who were about as well trained as Riley. Many of the operatives were new recruits since the CIA provided few veterans to APO. The new recruits were for backup use to any fully field classed agent that needed them, allowing the new recruits time with their families instead of spending many days out training at the military bases. The CIA allowed APO to recruit them from the military in order to get well trained men that they didn't have to train.

"All clear!" Riley growled.

Vaughn pushed down his night vision goggles and followed closely behind Riley. "Spread out."

Taking out the scanner that Jack had given him, he zoomed in on Sydney's location to find her just below him. He looked around for stairs and then motioned to three men to follow him while the others took on a mission of infiltrating the rest of the building. In the end, they should be able to meet up with Weiss and Nadia.

He turned into an open room and found a set of metal staircases at the Far East corner of the room. The air was stale and he figured that it was probably because the room was totally enclosed except for the staircase and the door that he had gone through. There was only one exit point, making their escape more difficult. He spotted four targets at the other side of the room. They were sitting at a table while smoking unfiltered cigarettes. Only one light lit the men as they played poker, leaving the outer walls in shadows.

Confident bastards, he thought as he took aim. Motioning to the other three, he told them to shoot at the same time. All four were down within a matter of seconds and all that could be heard was the slight whistle of the bullets splitting the air. Checking the rest of the open room, Vaughn walked to the middle of it with caution. The three men behind him spread out checking the rest of the corners as he made his way to the staircases.

"All clear." One of them told him just as he began going down the stairs. Taking each step with quiet precision, he kept the sight of his gun close to his face. Any mistake and the whole mission could go awry. Sydney's life depended on their ability to surprise their enemies. From past intel, the KGB was nothing to take lightly and rivaled the CIA in technology and skills. Hell, Sydney's mother had been a KGB agent without her father even knowing.

The bottom of the steps led to a large basement which was fully lit. He pulled down his night goggles off his face to find himself in an aisle of ammunition. There were several isles that were lined up making it difficult for him to tell if there were any enemy targets within range. The place seemed so quiet that he felt a sense of suspicion rising within him. Holding down his comm in his ear, he spoke quietly. "Shotgun to Merlin, do you copy?"

_"Hear you loud and clear." _

"I'm in the northeast corner of the building, basement floor. My vision is blocked and I need to know if there are any enemy targets near my position."

_"Shotgun, we've lost view of the target building because of the heavy cloud cover. I'm sorry, but we haven't been able to get any visual as of yet."_

"Copy that." Vaughn crouched down and kept close to the left side of his aisle.

"I'm getting tired of these games…" A voice, deep and raspy, broke the silence. "We've just ID you as Sydney Bristow, one of Irena Derevko's daughters. You quit the CIA a year ago… However what we don't know is who you're working for now. If you tell us, this can all be over. We could end you life just as easily as we began your life. Or we can induce more pain on your body then you've ever felt in your entire existence."

A shiver ran down his spine and he swallowed hard, getting his gun ready. Irena Derevko. She had brutally murdered his father and all he had gotten was a small star on a large wall to commemorate his work for the CIA. The same thing Sydney had gotten when they thought she had been killed.

"Somehow I doubt that." Sydney's voice croaked.

He heard two solid thuds that made his insides freeze and his eyes grow narrow. His hands gripped his gun hard and he had to force himself not to go tearing into the center of the room. These bastards would pay.

"Who the hell do you work…?" The voice stopped and a few whispers told Vaughn that they had been interrupted by something. Sneaking closer to the end of the aisle, he looked around the shelves to find a Sydney, bloody and bruised, on the ground with her arms tied behind her and her legs tied together. A man… wait he recognized the man. It was Andrew. He worked at the CIA training camp.

"Son of a bitch." Vaughn whispered to himself.

Andrew stood next to another man who was whispering into his ear. All Vaughn had to do was shoot him right between the eyes. But the best thing to do, at least what his training told him, was to wait until the other man left again. He noticed another set of stairs just opposite of the ones he came down.

"Tell him I want a report on that immediately." Andrew nodded and then turned back to Sydney. "Now where were we again?"

Just as the other man left the room, Vaughn took aim and pulled the trigger. The bullet took its mark right in the middle of his chest. The man's eyes went wide and his mouth opened as if to yell only he could not find his voice. He crumbled to the ground.

He signaled to the other three to check the perimeter as he stood up and jogged towards Sydney who looked up at him in surprise.

"Vaughn?" her voice asked softly. She looked terrible, bruises marred her light skin and her bottom lip was still bleeding.

"Hey." He quickly untied her bonds. "Can you stand?"

She winced as she sat up, but nodded to his question. The bonds around her wrists had left deep bloody wounds that looked slightly infected. As she stood up, she leaned heavily on him for support.

_"Shotgun, we're under heavy fire. You have to get out of there stat!"_ Weiss voice said on his comm. In the background he could hear shots go off and a few murderous yells.

"Ready?" He asked.

Taking a step, she recovered her legs quickly and nodded. She led the way towards the staircase that he had come from and waited to let two of the other agents go before her. One of them tossed her an extra gun.

As Vaughn got back to her side, she smiled quickly. "Thanks for the save."

"I agree… we need a vacation." Vaughn replied grinning.

They took the stairs quickly, knowing that any surprise they had was now gone. As they reached the first floor, they had to duck for cover because both the enemy and the other operatives were under deep fire. The shots lit the room and allowed them to spot an overturned ammunitions chest. They all ducked behind it.

"Retriever, Evergreen, give me your positions." Vaughn fired a few shots over the chest and ducked down again not even waiting to see if he hit his target.

Sydney did the same, her face grim and her eyes looked as if they were on fire. Anger had set into her usually placid face. The blood on her lip had dried and cracked again, though she took no notice of it as she grabbed a new magazine and clicked it into place.

_"We're closing in on your position Shotgun. ETA ten minutes. Do you have Phoenix?"_ Weiss sounded haggard as the shots from his side could be heard in the comms.

"We have Phoenix. There are too many. Merlin, is there any other way out of here?" Vaughn gasped as a bullet grazed the side of his arm.

There was silence, which worried him. "Merlin, do you read me?"

_"Sorry Shotgun, no other way out other than the way you went in. KGB built that warehouse so that it had a sort of failsafe. They made few exits just incase of insurgents." _

"Great." Vaughn grumbled and fired a few more shots over the chest. Until one of them ran out of ammunition, they were in a stalemate. That was unless the other teams got there in time.

"Hey, Jamison, go around back. Let's see if we can hit them from behind." Sydney nodded over to the agent right next to him. Vaughn glanced over at her, wondering what she was thinking. It was a risky proposition and at best they may be able to kill a few before they got caught.

Opening his mouth, he was about to protest when he stopped himself. He trusted her instincts. If she thought this was the best course of action, then she usually was able to pull it off. He nodded to her so she knew he was on the same lines and got ready to cover her if need be. Riley had the other side of the room covered.

As she crawled away another bullet just barely missed him. Cursing, he turned around and shot over the chest again. There were more enemy targets entering the room and if they didn't get the room under control soon, they all might end up dead.

_"Shotgun, Retriever's unit is down. Repeat, Retriever's unit is down. My team has met up with them and only… oh my god, Weiss!"_

"Shit." Vaughn felt his heart speed up. Something had gone wrong. What did they do wrong? He tried to trace back to everything that had happened and couldn't think of any better way to have run the mission. "Evergreen, give me your status. Evergreen do you copy?"

_"Weiss, he's been shot. We need a med-evac stat! Merlin, get another team on the ground now!"_

Then shots from a different corner brought his attention back on Sydney who had found her way to the other side of the room. She had a small group of targets already down while Jamison had just made his own accomplishment of getting his targets down.

Within five minutes the room had grown quiet.

"All clear!" Sydney proclaimed. Jamison stood up from behind a large rusted steel tank and grimaced. "What's the status on Weiss and Nadia?"

"We need to get out of here. Jamison, Thompson, Riley, good work. We need to rendezvous both Retriever and Evergreen at the Southeast corner. Thompson, get ready with med supplies. They got hit hard." Vaughn stood up, keeping his gun trained on the door. They all went out of the room cautiously. Sydney was by his side as he exited the room. "Weiss is down. Nadia's with him. We have to get over there."

Sydney nodded and the team headed southeast going from room to room. The closer they got to Nadia's position, the more force they hit. Sydney was now leading the group and Vaughn noticed how she cradled her left side slightly. He knew how adrenaline could keep a person from feeling their injured body. How hurt was she really?

"Nadia?" Sydney called out just as they got into another room. Rolling to the side, Vaughn tried to get Sydney to duck down. But she didn't, she stood in place staring at her sister who cradled Weiss in her arms. Weiss had been shot in the chest twice.

A shot rang out and the bullet came close to hitting her. As if waking from a startling dream, she dived to the ground and crouched down. Vaughn followed her as they moved closer to Weiss and Nadia. He shot at the two nearest targets, trying to give them as much cover as possible.

"Sydney…" Nadia cried, tears sliding down her cheeks.

"He'll be okay." Sydney reassured her. "Thompson is here. Let me see your comm."

Nadia handed her comm over and moved out of the way to let Thompson get closer to Weiss. Her dark strands hung loose around her face and her eyes were wild with fear.

"Merlin, this is Phoenix. We need an escape plan." Sydney said as soon as she put the comm into her ear.

"Oh Phoenix, you're okay… Sorry, uh, do you see the door on the southeast side? It should lead you to a hallway. You go all the way down it until you get to the last door on your right. It should lead to the outside. A chopper will be there ETA five minutes."

"Copy that." Sydney brought up her gun and began shooting. "Thompson, can we move him? The door over there will lead us out."

Thompson nodded. "It didn't hit anything critical. If we can just keep pressure on his wounds, he should be fine. Nadia, can you help me get him to his feet? Agent Bristow and Agent Vaughn, give us some cover. Riley, lead us out."

"Hey Mike." Weiss croaked with his eyes glassy. A familiar humorous smile stayed on his face. "Nice of you to join us."

"Hey buddy. Thompson, we've got your cover." Vaughn replied.

It took them a bit to get Weiss on his feet. They shuffled over to the door as Vaughn and Sydney backed their way out and shot at few open targets. The room looked like a blood house with bodies lying everywhere. Some of the agents in there he knew and he pitied their families. They had fought for their country and died doing it. They died in honor… but that would never seal the wounds of the family they left behind.

Sydney fell to the ground and he looked down to see her get back up quickly. She raised her gun and kept a steady fire as they walked backwards. Popping out the empty canister in his gun, Vaughn grabbed a new magazine from his pouch that was strapped on to his leg and clicked a new one in.

As soon as they got to the door, the two turned and ran to catch up with Nadia, Thompson, and Weiss. Vaughn turned to see the rest of the team falling back with them. There were only five left out of the twenty that had come with them. Swallowing, he jogged outside to find himself on the roof of the building. The chopper spun cold air at them as they began to load.

Both he and Sydney covered the rest of the team as they got in.

"Come on!" Riley called to them.

Vaughn allowed Sydney to get in first before he jumped in. Everyone was silent and they tried not to look down to see the graveyard that they had just left, the companions that would never come back. There were men who lay still on the ground, cold and unmoving. "How is he?"

"We need to get back. He's bleeding out, which could lead to organ failure. If we can manage to stop the bleeding, he should be fine." Thompson replied from the other side of the chopper.

Turning his attention to Sydney who had her head resting on the back of the seat she sat on. Her hand was bloody, covering a wound that he had not noticed before. Even her skin looked paler than it did under the artificial light of the warehouse. She smiled slightly looking tired. "I'm okay."

"When did you get sho… Syd, why didn't you tell me?" Vaughn ripped off his sleeve and moved her hand to find the deep wound bleeding profusely. She winced as he put pressure on it. Breathing in, she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Thompson rushed over to look at the wound. Feeling her pulse, he looked over at Vaughn, his face matching the graying sky. Then looking back at Sydney, he noticed she wasn't moving. "Agent Bristow?"

"Syd!" Vaughn tried to shake her gently awake. Her eyes didn't open. "Sydney!"

To be continued….

* * *

Say tuned for new Chapters coming soon! 


	10. Chapter Nine: Troubled

Author's note

Sorry for the short delay. College is getting hectic now that finals are coming around. Here's the next chapter, hope you like it. Don't forget to review! Thanks!_

* * *

"Syd."_

_"Dad." Her eyebrows rose in surprise as if not expecting to run into him. Pushing her hair back behind her ear, she gave him a polite smile and crossed her arms across her chest. "Hi."_

_"You're back for the summer?" He phrased the question more like a statement, remembering she had one more year in college before graduating. Rumors in the office told him that she was planning on going to graduate school to follow what she believed her mother had done._

_Sydney shook her head. "I came to get the last of my stuff. I'm getting an apartment with my old roommate. I'm heading off to graduate school next year."_

_Had he miscalculated her year in school? He tried to go back over the years but could not figure out how he had mistaken what year she was in. Just three years ago he had been sitting in on her high school graduation ceremony. _

_"I graduated early." She told him, studying his face. "Will is packing the last of my stuff."_

_Was this the time to tell her about SD-6? He tried to quickly analyze what was happening before him. He thought he had another year to think it over. She had some suspicions, he knew that. She was smart, everyone knew that. Her perfect SAT scores showed it. It wouldn't surprise him if she figured it all out soon._

_She looked at him as if knowing that he wanted to tell her something. But her eyes spelled disappointment after a few seconds of thickening silence between them. "Bye dad."_

_At that moment, he knew he had lost the chance to tell her everything he wanted to tell her. To tell her how sorry he hadn't been around as she grew up, to tell her he was sorry she didn't have a mother to look after her, and to tell her how much he loved her. But none of that displayed on his face as she turned and left. This time there was no peck on the cheek, no hug, no smile. She just left…_

"Jack!"

Jack turned to see Marshall trailing him. The young technician waved his hand around crazily as if to draw his attention. He waited expectantly with little patience. The mission had gone horribly wrong, leaving more than half their officers dead. Many of the other agents were still in the ICU unit at a local military hospital under fake aliases. His daughter had fallen unconscious from severe internal injuries and the men who had injured her were going to pay for what they did. The last thing he wanted to do was to talk to Marshall, a man who had the tendency to ramble.

"Look, it's the disk I gave you two weeks ago. Syd… Agent Bristow, she had it in her hand when she came in… Wait, why did she have it in her hand?… ohhhh… Did you give it to her?" Marshall looked down at the small USB thumb drive in his hand and then looked knowingly at him. "It's got files on it relating to the KGB reforming their alliances. There are coordinates to their stations, lists of potential leaders..."

"Have you informed Sloane?"

"No, not yet. I just found it strange that Vaughn gave this to me when I went to visit the hospital. He and Nadia have been there all night and I thought… well why not bring them some food? So I did… and are you going somewhere?"

"Yes, actually, I am going to see my daughter. Give this intel to Sloane. He'll want to know Mission Groundhog was a success." Jack turned to leave.

"Are you saying that all of this was planned?" Marshall asked slightly confused. "Even your daughter… Sydney getting caught?"

Spinning around again, Jack looked back down at the flash drive in the man's hand. He felt the muscles in his jaw tighten. Giving Marshall a flat expression, he could hardly keep the anger out of his voice. "I never planned on my daughter getting shot because of some badly manufactured technology going haywire. Take the drive to Sloane."

With that, he left the underground APO office and drove over to the military hospital. It was easy to enter the Intensive Care Unit with his special access card, so he didn't have to check in with the doctors or nurses. The facility was made up of a couple of large rooms inside a bland building with beds set up in rows so that doctors could get to their patients with ease.

Each section had cloth curtains separating the beds so that the patient and their family had a little privacy. Many of the beds were full of soldiers returning from the front lines in Iraq. The hospital placed all of their special operations agents into a small corner of the room. Right now he was almost sure that the beds were full of APO agents.

He spotted Sydney's bed over by the nurse's station. Striding over to her, he looked around to make sure Vaughn and Nadia were no where nearby. He sat down in the chair next to her bed. Looking down as her pale face, he swallowed hard trying to remember the last time he had spent quality time with her. It had been so long ago… Could he really not remember?

"The mission… it was a success." He whispered gently pushing a strand of hair that had slipped in front of her eyes. "We've got the intel to shut them down for good."

Her eyes opened slowly as if it took too much energy. Her skin, it was so pale. "Daddy?"

"Hey sweetheart." He smiled slightly, happy to see her awake. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired." She replied truthfully. "You said you got my disk?"

"Yeah… You did well."

Her eyes closed for a moment and then she opened them as her lips curled up a little. Those dimples… he remembered when she had just been born and he had held her. It would be the first time that she smiled up at him to show him her tiny dimples. For the most part, she had been a happy baby. Even as a toddler, she would give him the biggest grins as she swung up into the air. She told him she could almost touch the heavens.

Then darkness crept into their home and her mother passed away, leaving him with secrets that he promised he would keep from his daughter. He secluded himself to his study trying to figure out ways to keep her safe. But it only pushed her away and he remembered her returning from boarding school, unhappy and angry at him. No more daddy's little girl. Every time she looked at him her eyes were filled with anger, confusion, and sadness. This was not what he had wanted for her.

"Where's Vaughn?" She asked, her voice slurred slightly. He guessed that it was probably from the morphine they were giving her through the IV in her arm.

"I don't know. You should get some rest though." He kissed her lightly on the top of her head and then he smiled sincerely. "I'm glad your home."

She looked at him and then the sides of her mouth turned up slightly allowing him to see her dimples. "Me too."

He watched her close her eyes… watched her chest as it rose slightly up and then back down in a steady rhythm… as the seconds, minutes, and hours ticked by, he watched her until he fell into a troubled sleep.

* * *

Vaughn gazed at the vending machine without being able to tell one bag from the other. Rubbing them, he tried to get his eyes to clear up enough so he could actually see what he was about to eat. How long had it been since he had actually had a good nights sleep? He couldn't remember. Probably not since the night Sydney had been captured.

"You look like I feel." A woman's voice said beside him and he turned his head quickly.

"Nadia." He relaxed. "Hey."

"Two of the most important people in my life are in here." Nadia told him, her eyes lost in confusion. He understood exactly what she meant. Other than Sydney, Weiss was the only other person that he felt really mattered in his life.

"Yeah… I know."

Nadia sat down on a bench behind them against the hallway wall and leaned her chin on top of her hands as her elbows rested on her knees. Unlike him, she had changed out of her dark field clothes into jeans and a loose fitting sweater. "Until a few months ago, I really didn't have anyone that I felt I could really count on other than myself. Then I found out I had a sister… and a father. It was strange, because I've lived so long without having any ties. And now with Weiss… I really like him. He's funny, he's cute… I don't think I could loose either of them."

"You wont." Vaughn said as he sat down beside her.

A tear fell down her cheek and she brushed it away. She smiled sheepishly. "How is she?"

"Syd? Doctors finished with her surgery about four hours ago and she's back in the ICU. She's not out of trouble yet… There was a lot of internal bleeding and they're not sure they fixed it all yet. It's basically a wait and see." He put his face into his hands and let out a long sigh. "I left the room to go get some coffee but I found myself outside running. I ran until I reached that park on Oak Street ten miles away. Then I realized where I was and made my way back. How's Weiss?"

"He's awake." She smiled slightly. "The bullets missed his organs. But I wanted him to get some rest. So I left his room to get a snack and check on my sister."

Vaughn nodded and stood up. Looking at the bags of chemically processed food again, he suddenly didn't feel the need to eat… at least not the need to eat anything from the vending machine. "I'm heading back, want to join me?"

Nadia stood and followed him in silence. They made their way back and had to show their badges as in order to enter the ICU room. The first thing he noticed was a slumped body resting next to Sydney's bed. Walking quickly over, he was surprised to see that it was Jack.

Sometimes it was hard to remember that Jack, a poker-faced man, was Sydney's father. But during the times his daughter was in trouble, the man seemed to turn into a different person… Into a person who you would have thought had spent every waking moment making sure that his daughter was alright. Not a person who had basically abandoned his daughter when they had thought her mother, a KGB spy who used her husband as a conduit to the CIA, had died in a horrible car wreck. His relationship with his daughter was a rocky one at best.

He took a seat on the edge of Sydney's bed and took her hand into his. She had been in and out of consciousness for the past two days and every once in awhile he thought she had squeezed his hand in return. But she didn't this time and he kissed it softly in hopes of waking her up. Nothing happened and he let out a long breath of anxiety.

"She asked for you." Jack's monotone voice startled Vaughn out of his thoughts.

"She was awake?" Nadia asked.

Jack stood up stiffly. "Yes, she was."

"Wait…" Vaughn said just as Jack turned to leave. "Why did Syd have a disk in her hand that Marshall created and given to you?"

The man looked down at his daughter with as much love as he had ever seen the man portray and then looked back at Vaughn with a deadpan expression. "Because we had her on a recon mission to pick up intel on the KGB. At this moment, there are CIA teams all over Russia raiding areas in which she located in their computer files and by nightfall the KGB will no longer exist."

"So this was all planned?" Vaughn asked now standing up and moved towards the older man. "…This whole situation?"

"It depends on what you're referring to."

"Sydney getting captured… was that all part of your plan to take down the KGB?" Vaughn replied, not at all fazed by the diversion tactic.

Jack nodded. "That was planned. However, we received faulty technology and that caused the mission to go south. Four days ago at six hundred hours we lost communication with Sydney. That's why we sent a team in for her. I was in Russia while you were unconscious in the hospital. We couldn't locate her whereabouts and had to use your watch in order to locate her."

"You risked your daughter's life… just to take down the KGB? Not only that, but then you didn't have the decency to brief me on your intentions?" Vaughn felt his face grow hot. Why hadn't Sydney mentioned this to him?

"Keep your voice down Agent Vaughn. What I do is none of your concern… Besides this mission was classified and out of your field rating. I would never put my daughter's life at risk. If you want to blame someone, blame Sloane for putting her in this position. I had no hand in this operation other than following my orders…" Jack growled, his eyes glaring in much of the way they had done when Sydney had first come back after she had been missing for two years. "Surely you can understand the stakes we were under and understand why Sydney never mentioned our operational plans with you.

"When you saw me at the Farm, Sloane had given me a bug in which I was to give to Sydney. She was ordered to place it in a bathroom stall in hopes of finding any information from the mole. We were fairly surprised to find that there were two moles in that department of intelligence and we were afraid that there would be more. So the director ordered Sydney not to discuss this intel to anyone, including you because if anyone had been listening in you both could have been made. So I contacted her again, this time through an untraceable connection. I gave her a contact point in which to meet so that I could gave her the disk.

"A week before the first field exercise, intelligence concluded that the two moles were planning on contacting their superiors. One of them believed they had been compromised by you. However, during their time of contact with their base, we allowed them to find out that Sydney also knew who they were. They had no choice but to take her in as a prisoner in hopes to gain leverage for failing their recon mission. Once they returned to their base, we found out that they were terminated.

"Sydney used her time there to gain some counterintelligence. We hoped that she might find a computer in which she could download intel onto the thumb drive. Once she had finished her reconnaissance work, the plan was to rendezvous at the extraction point. She never made it. We couldn't contact her because her communication link went dead. They caught her just as she was about to escape and we lost her location because her watch broke. They moved her around Russia and I couldn't locate her. So I came back hoping that Marshall would help." Jack told them.

"Then you used Vaughn's watch." Nadia chimed in, understanding what had all gone down.

Jack nodded and seemed slightly surprised as if he had forgotten she was behind him. "Precisely. We used your watch to locate her and extracted her. Marshall said you found the thumb drive in her hand."

"She gave it to me just before they rushed her to the emergency room." Vaughn nodded.

Just then he heard Sydney moving around behind him. He turned and was surprised to see her eyes open studying him. Closing her eyes heavily and then opening them again, she frowned slightly and whispered hoarsely. "I'm sorry… for not telling you. I wanted to…"

Vaughn had been deceived and yet he could only chuckle at their situation. The world of espionage had to be one of the most confusing worlds to live in. He walked over and kissed her softly on her forehead. "Hey… You're awake."

He pushed a stubborn piece of hair out of her eyes and felt relief wash over him. The ton of lead weight on his chest and shoulders that had been dragging on him for days was suddenly gone. It was the first time he had seen her awake since the helicopter ride.

Sydney's eyes turned away from him and towards Nadia. Her lips formed a smile as if just noticing her for the first time. "Nadia… How's Weiss?"

"He's going to be alright." Nadia smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. "How do you feel?"

"Tired." She replied with a long slow drawl, her smile vanishing.

Vaughn looked up at her monitor and saw that her BP was slightly below normal, but still higher then the night before. "They have you on morphine."

She nodded slightly and closed her eyes.

"I love you." He leaned over and whispered to her.

. Her eyes opened and studied him for a bit as if remembering something. After a long moment, a slight trace of a smile reformed on her lips. "I love you too."

His grin reached from one ear to the other and he was almost sure he looked ridiculous. Rubbing her hand, he felt like things were starting to return to normal. As she lay there, he caressed her cheek gently with his hand. She leaned into his palm and her soft lips kissed it.

"Get some rest." He told her as he stood up.

"Don't leave." She pleaded softly to him, her eyes opening.

He looked over and noticed that Nadia and Jack hung back to allow them some time alone. He had forgotten that they were even there. Nadia smiled at both of them and went over to her sister.

"Hey, I'm going back to Eric. I'll be back later." She kissed her sister on top of her head. Sydney whispered softly in her ear and Nadia giggled at whatever her sister had just shared with her. "I'll tell him."

"I'm going to get an update from Marshall. Get some rest." Jack told her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Nodding to the both of them, her father walked stiffly out of the room following behind Nadia.

Pulling up the empty chair behind him, Vaughn sat down and took her hand again. "Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere." She closed her eyes with a satisfied smile.

"Paris?… Venice?… or Rome? Trattoria de Nardi… if I remember correctly, we still haven't gone yet… It's almost spring there." He spoke softly hoping to lull her to sleep.

"Sounds wonderful." She murmured.

Inhale and exhale, in and out, her breathing was music to his ears. Cradling her hand, he laid his head on the mattress and drifted off to sleep. His dreams were filled with the sweet scents of Italy and he smiled at the sight of those sweet dimples…

THE END


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